


no pain so exquisite as to be bound (to you)

by ChronicTonsillitis



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Arranged Marriage, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, and also non hate sex, there will at some point be hate sex, we've got them all baby
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:27:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27860774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChronicTonsillitis/pseuds/ChronicTonsillitis
Summary: “Gon nau,” the officiant says, slipping her hand into the man’s.From now—Their skin is hot against each other's, palms sweaty as their fingers lace together.“Tu ste glong raun kom won.”Two are joined as one.Clarke swallows hard, and looks up. Two pairs of eyes widen simultaneously, two sets of hackles instantly rising.****Forced to stand alone by the departure of her sort-of almost co-leader, Clarke does her damndest to hold the Dropship camp together. The thanks she gets when the Ark comes down? Her camp shuttered and her authority stripped. For her people, she agrees to marry a stranger, dashing any hope of finding her soulmate. Clarke is told nothing of her Grounder betrothed; yet the man waiting at the altar she knows all too well. In exchange for keeping his identity secret, an agreement is made, and the clock starts counting down: to the arrival of her soulmark, and the dissolution of this sham marriage.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 22
Kudos: 231
Collections: t100fic4blm Donation Celebration





	no pain so exquisite as to be bound (to you)

She probably should’ve expected something like this.

After all, if her mom had been willing to send her down to Earth with the rest of them for the sake of the Ark, why would she balk at a simple marriage? 

And of course Clarke goes along with it, because if not her, then who? Wells is dead, Bellamy is long gone; there’s no one else of the right age visible enough, no one else important enough to the Council to be a worthy prize for the Grounders. 

Clarke scoffs internally. A worthy hostage is more like it.

The irony of it is not lost on her. She was forced into leadership by the actions of the Council, sending her to the ground, and forced to stand alone in charge of the delinquents by the unceremonious departure of her sort-of, almost co-leader. It was her who faced down the Trikru leader, her who held the Dropship camp together as they were besieged, and her who ultimately negotiated for peace.

And what was the thanks she got when the Ark came down? Her camp shuttered, her authority stripped, her role limited to a purely honorary seat on the Council with no real power, an empty concession as a reward for all her hard work. She’s spent the last year more or less stagnant, being spoken over in meetings and condescended to by people who kept her around purely because the Trikru representatives refuse to speak to anyone else. She wonders how they’ll deal with that particular problem now that they’ve shipped her off to Trishanakru.

Clarke expected to feel relief when she wasn’t in charge anymore, but instead she’s felt useless, like a child who’s long outgrown the kid’s table. Useless and flat.

Still, she didn’t expect her return to usefulness to be as a bargaining chip.

“You understand what you’re asking me to give up?” Clarke asks her mother behind closed doors after the offer of marriage is first put forth. “The home I’ve made, the relationships I’ve built?”

Abby wrings her hands, eyes full of guilt. “It’s not forever, you’ll be able to come back. To visit, at least.”

Clarke laughs harshly. “It is forever, that’s the point!” She paces back and forth, her heart clenching almost painfully. “It’s not a job, Mom, it’s a marriage. I’ll be one of them, bound to one of them, for _life_. I’ll never get a chance—” She breaks off, stopping facing the wall. “I’ll never have the opportunity to have what you and dad had. I’ll never get to have a true partner.”

She’s still too young to have her mark, just a hair past nineteen. They say it happens when you turn twenty, but that’s just an estimate. She’s likely got nine months or so until it starts to form, the lines beginning to weave their way across the skin below her collarbones in bits and pieces, slowly darkening until it’s all there, her own unique pattern branded black into her flesh. 

An outward marker of genetic compatibility, her mom had called it during Clarke’s medical training, but Clarke prefers the traditional term: soulmark.

Matches on the Ark were not universal, but they were common enough. Her parents had been matched, and it had been easy for Clarke even as a child to see the difference between their relationship and that of the non-matched couples. There was a reason nobody took relationships seriously until they both were marked.

“I know that, honey,” Abby says, her voice soft. Clarke hates it, hates when she combines politics with acting like her mom. Abby puts her hand on Clarke’s arm, her touch innately comforting in a way that is wholly unfair given the situation. “But with Wells gone…” 

Her words trail off, but the implication is clear. Abby thinks Clarke won’t match anyways. She thinks her daughter’s intended match is lying dead in a grave beside the dropship, buried beneath six feet of dirt, so what is she really being asked to give up? Only a dream, only a fairytale. Nothing of substance.

Clarke isn’t so sure. 

She loved Wells, she still does, but it was never— like that, for them. She knows growing up everyone expected them to match, the prince and princess of the Ark, and maybe when she was little she believed it. But when he died it was her best friend that she grieved, not her soulmate.

And maybe she’s being foolish and romantic, but she still has hope. She thinks her match is out there somewhere, still breathing. But if she accepts this deal, this marriage, that hope is dead.

Clarke remembers the girls at the dropship camp tittering beside the fire, speculating about their marks and their matches. She remembers the way Octavia stared intently at Lincoln’s soulmark, memorizing it, confident in three years she’d be marked with its twin. She remembers tracing a pattern across Finn’s skin in the bunker, imagining he could be hers.

None of the delinquents were old enough to have a mark, save Bellamy of course. Raven’s started blooming a few weeks in, but Bellamy’s soulmark was fully fledged well before they came down, winding black and proud across his chest as he strutted about the camp shirtless. From his prolific activities with the camp girls, Clarke assumes he didn’t have a match that he knew of. On the Ark, at least, it was unheard of to have a matching soulmark and not act on it. To be given a gift like that and to turn it away— no one is that stupid.

Then again, it’s Bellamy, so who knows. 

He was stupid enough to leave his sister, stupid enough to leave Clarke to fend for herself as leader of a bunch of kids barely younger than herself, with nothing but a half-hearted shooting lesson and a suggestion to keep Miller close. And yeah, she’d survived, but it would have been a hell of a lot easier with a partner.

“If we had any other options, Clarke,” Abby begs. “I wouldn’t ask. But we need this alliance. Without Trishanakru, Azgeda will wipe us out before the end of the summer.”

Clarke stiffens, her nose pointing upwards, because she knows this. Of course she knows this. She’s been in every goddamn Council meeting, even if nobody had bothered to listen to what she had to say. Maybe if they had, they wouldn’t be in this position.

But they didn’t, and now they don’t. It’s this or nothing.

So fine. If this is all she can do for her people, she’ll do it. She’ll give up her family, give up her friends, give up her chance to be with her soulmate even before her mark begins to darken on her skin.

It’s better that way, her Trishanakru attendants say as they bathe her in milk and drape her in silk, prettying her up like a lamb for slaughter. Better not to know, so she can go into the marriage free of tethers, unbound by her own expectations. Clean of skin and pure of heart, they say.

“And what of my husband-to-be?” Clarke asks dryly. “Is he still unmarked?” 

The question is only half sarcasm, the other half genuine curiosity. She knows nothing of the man she is to marry except his status amongst the clan: second to the Chief, a warrior. In negotiations they never mentioned his name, temperament, age, nothing. He could be an old man for all Clarke knows; even a child, if Trishanakru shares the same customs as Trikru.

The woman braiding her hair purses her lips, not meeting Clarke’s eyes. “No,” she admits. “But he will show you the same respect you show him. He has not found his match, and after today, he will have no match but you.”

_How romantic_ , Clarke thinks, resisting the urge to roll her eyes.

She has no pretensions about this marriage. She does not expect love, nor even happiness. All she expects is the treaty with Skaikru to be honored. If that happens, it will be enough.

She stands still as they drape her with beads and gems, lace strings of pearls into her hair. Absentmindedly, she wonders where exactly all the jewelry came from. Maybe an old museum, or a jewelry store.

They pat around her eyes with oil, pressing gold leaf to it so it peels off on her skin. Her dress is long and heavy, layers of fabrics darned with intricate embroidery. She almost laughs, thinking of what everyone back in Arkadia would say. She imagines the _Princess_ jokes would come on pretty strong.

For all the bangles they slide up her arms, all the jewels they hang from her ears, her ankles, her hips, her hair; they put no necklaces on her. It’s confusing, at least until it isn’t.

Clarke balks at the monstrosity they pull out, because it’s a collar.

There’s no better word for it really. Not a collar like a dog would wear, not a thin strip of leather, no: this is a bridle, a harness, an anchor. It’s gold and bejeweled and if Clarke wasn’t the one wearing it she’d call it beautiful, but she is.

It’s thick and heavy, settling on her shoulders like a weight, making them sag. It covers her chest from the hollow of her throat to the middle of her sternum, covers her shoulders from clavicle to acromion.

It’s choking her.

It clasps behind her back with some complicated mechanism she cannot see, and Clarke thinks she spots one of the attendants pocket a key. Her throat goes dry, hands fighting the urge to scrabble at her throat.

“What is this?” Her voice is shaky, her anxiety leaching into her tone.

Her attendants are polite enough to ignore it, reaching out to adjust her hair so it falls over the hammered metal, gold on gold. “It is traditional in weddings like this. To cover your mark.” The woman hums, her finger tracing over the jewels, a wistful look on her face. “They are normally leather. You must be very important to the clan.”

_Oh joy_ , Clarke thinks.

“I don’t have a mark yet,” she grits. “Why do I have to wear it?”

“But you will. It’s tradition, but besides, it’ll be easier for you to start now. So there’s no temptation.”

Clarke isn’t sure what kind of fucked up weird conservatism she’s marrying into, but she’s not thrilled. “When can I take it off?” Her attendants go quiet, their eyes not meeting hers. “Hello?”

The youngest one, a kind looking girl who’d smiled when Clarke had asked her name, gives her an apologetic look. “You can’t. The key will go to your husband, as a sign of your trust.” She shrugs. “You will get used to it.”

Clarke highly doubts that, but she also doubts that these women have any say in whether she stays permanently collared. 

It’s moments like these she thinks she probably should have insisted on meeting her husband before the day of the wedding, or insisted on having some of her own people here with her to advocate on her behalf. Besides the inherent powerlessness of this marriage, she didn’t expect to actually be locked into anything.

Not physically at least. 

The last piece of her outfit that they add is a gold beaded vail, hanging over her face and eyes like a curtain. She joked about being lamb for slaughter, but seriously. The collar, the blinders: she feels like livestock. 

Clarke frowns. She will put up with the indignity for her people, of course she will, but fuck if she can’t show her displeasure.

The first part of the wedding is small, intimate, and Clarke is grateful. The nice attendant tells her it will last a half hour, in which her husband-to-be and her will be bound temporarily. After that, they will have time to meet privately. 

By the downcast eyes of the attendant, Clarke thinks that this is a polite way of saying he will have time to sample the goods before committing to her permanently. Her skin crawls at the thought. She knew there was likely to be some sort of required consummation, but she’s sort of blocked it out. She hasn’t had sex since Finn, hasn’t had any sort of romantic or sexual interactions in the interim. She hasn’t _wanted_ to.

She’s both embarrassed by her inexperience and furious at herself for being anything other than angry. 

They lead her into the ceremonial hall, an open room with a vaulted ceiling. Light shines in through broken stained glass windows, and she thinks maybe, before the bombs, this used to be a church. Fitting, she supposes.

She’s directed to a cushion at the end of the room, in front of some sort of altar. She sweeps the silks away from her ankles and kneels, sitting back on her bare feet.

Clarke would think someone would tell her husband-to-be she’s already there, or that this was to be a formal event, but nevertheless she can hear him arguing with someone as he approaches the door. Her attendants stand at her back, waiting calmly.

“—ridiculous for them to just expect I would have no problem with it,” a man says, his rasp deep in a familiar way that she cannot seem to place. “I have duties to the clan, to you, and your ambassadors just expect me to drop everything and marry a stranger, just because she’s related to some backwoods Seya. Is she supposed to come with me into battle?”

Another man speaks softly in response, his voice low enough it doesn’t quite reach Clarke’s ears.

“Why should it matter to me whether she’s marked or not? If she’s not a warrior I have no use for her. What am I supposed to do with some— some _spoiled child bride_?”

His last hiss echoes through the room as he enters, striking her like a slap to the face. 

Clarke bristles, her teeth clenching, and lifts her shoulders. She doesn’t want to be in this marriage either, thank you very much, especially not to a man who’s clearly too arrogant to see past his own nose. 

She’s not a warrior, fine, but she fights in different ways. She’s a politician, and a healer, and a strategist. Clarke is useful, and not just as some diplomatic trophy.

The reply is too quiet for her to hear, but she’s sure it wouldn’t calm her down.

Her intended apologizes to her attendants, and Clarke hears them shuffle to the side, letting him past. She’s not sure why he bothers, clearly he has no care for propriety. He drops unceremoniously to his knees beside her without a glance in her direction, the man to whom he was speaking coming around to stand in front of them. The officiant, she guesses.

Clarke keeps her gaze straight ahead, glaring at the paneled wall in front of her. 

The ceremony is conducted wholly in Trig, the words unfamiliar and spoken so quickly Clarke misses most of the actual content. She’s okay at Trig, but with her unofficial house arrest leaving only Lincoln to practice with, she’s still far from fluent, and none of this is anything she would have even thought to learn. 

At some point she’s directed to raise her right hand, and the man beside her his left. The officiant continues, “—ogeda. Nomfa kom Trishanakru, Seken kom Seya, yu na teik dis?”

The bone of her wrist brushes against his skin. The contact is disconcerting, and her eyes flicker involuntarily to the man’s hand. 

His skin is tan, several shades darker than her own, his hand broad. His nails are short but clean, and she wonders if he too had to take a milk bath before this. 

“Sha,” he says, his voice a low rumble, and the officiant hands him one end of a red ribbon, wrapping it once around his wrist. Clarke shivers.

Probably not.

Her eyes come back up as she realizes the officiant is speaking directly to her now, his words slow and careful. He gives her a serious look, something almost fatherly, his eyebrows pulling together. “Nomfri kom Skaikru,” he asks. _Daughter of Skaikru._ “Yu na teik dis?” _Will you allow this?_

In the corner of her eye, she sees the man at her side stiffen, his spine snapping straight, but she doesn’t have time to puzzle through that. She meets the officiant’s eyes with a resolute stare, and nods. “Yes.”

His lips curl into a half grin, as though he is proud of her answer, and he loops the ribbon around her wrist, placing the end softly into her hand. Clarke closes her fist around it.

The officiant bids them to stand, and they do, rising as one to their feet, wrists bound between them. The officiant takes both their unbound hands and gestures for them to face one another.

Clarke closes her eyes and opens them again, releasing a steadying breath through her nose. She forces her feet to turn, keeping her gaze pointed downward. She will not let this man see doubt in her eyes, won’t let him catch a hint of fear.

“Gon nau,” the officiant says, slipping her hand into the man’s. 

_From now—_

Their skin is hot against each other's, palms sweaty as their fingers lace together. 

“Tu ste glong raun kom won.”

_Two are joined as one._

Clarke swallows hard, and looks up. Two pairs of eyes widen simultaneously, two sets of hackles instantly rising. 

Because even though her husband is a stranger, she knows his eyes: deep brown staring out now from unfamiliar charcoal black; the same way she knows the curl of his hair, the line of his shoulders, the pattern that lies beneath the paint on his chest.

She knows these things the same way he knows the slope of her nose, the curve of her breasts, the mark above her lip, the weight of her body clinging to his.

Clarke’s heart races.

_Bellamy._

__

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [The t100 Fic for BLM Initiative](https://t100fic-for-blm.carrd.co) Donation Celebration with beautiful artwork by Bri (underbellamy)! The Initiative is still accepting prompts and going strong, hitting $4000 in donations as of this week!
> 
> Hope you guys like it, we're in for a bumpy ride!
> 
> a comment or a kudo would be loved and appreciated, XOXO


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